Transport committee  Yes.

Transport committee  This motion relates to clause 63 and the Aeronautics Act, which the Committee will be addressing briefly, I believe. In order for the legislation to come into force when it is actually passed, an adjustment has to be made. Rather than saying “ninety days”, we can simply stipulate that the Act will come into force when it is passed by Parliament.

Transport committee  Yes.

Transport committee  We don't have regulations for these provisions. They're laid out in the legislation itself.

Transport committee  We don't want to have to do regulations just to define this concept, so we'd rather try to define it and contain it.

Transport committee  I just want to explain the difference between a railway line and a siding. Without a railway line, sidings are of absolutely no use to a public transit company. If we include all sidings in Canada, it will create a lot of administrative problems for railway companies. Here, we want to assign them to public transit companies.

Transport committee  Later on, rather than referring to the geographic area, perhaps we could try to include a specific reference to the actual public transit or commuter service activity. By removing any reference to the geographic area, we would cover all of Canada, and it would be difficult to require...

Transport committee  Under the current wording of the Act, reference is made only to corridors and main lines. It doesn't talk about sidings.

Transport committee  It's rare. It happens occasionally, but it's rare. At the present time, the Act only requires that they maintain a register of the main lines.

Transport committee  I believe it is covered under the definition of “urban transit authority”. The owner of the MTA is the province. It's the same thing in Toronto, with GO services, and in Vancouver as well. I believe it's covered both ways —by the offer to the province and the offer to the urban transit authority.

Transport committee  Exactly, so we're trying to mesh the two.

Transport committee  [Inaudible--Editor] a problem. For example, we know that if the MTA belongs to the Province of Quebec, it serves the metropolitan Montreal area and all the surrounding communities. However, based on what you are proposing, that MTA could decide to acquire a corridor in Toronto, if it wanted to.

Transport committee  If we just deleted, at the end of the definition, “in a metropolitan area”, I think that would work.

Transport committee  Yes, something like that. I think Mr. Laframboise is concerned about two things, including the “metropolitan”, right?

Transport committee  It's just that because this wording comes up several times in the provision, we're going to have to go with the drafters and look at how it applies. In essence, we don't disagree with that, but can we leave this for the end and come back to it if we have time, or maybe work with the drafters?